Shipping based on location and weight (table rates)

Would you like to make a shipping system based on location and weight?

  1. Login to Magento
  2. Go to System -> Configuration -> Select scope on website level -> Go to Shipping -> Table Rates
  3. Click on the button Export to CSV
  4. Edit the CSV and insert a new row for each condition

The table rates sheet will look about this (don’t copy the first row):

Country,State,Zip-Code,”Subtotal and above”,Shipping Costs

BEL,*,,0.0000,14
NLD,*,,0.0000,4.50

So in the country column you place the column. In the state/province column * means all states/provinces. Subtotal and above means the subtotal for which the shipping rule is valid. And for shipping costs you will set the shipping costs that will be charged.

Linking Magento with MailChimp

Would you like to link Magento with Mailchimp?

  1. Create an account at http://www.mailchimp.com
  2. Download and install the MageMonkey plugin from: http://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/mage-monkey-mailchimp-integration-4865.html
  3. Grab the API key from MailChimp. Login -> Account -> API Key -> Add a Key
  4. Insert the API key in Magento under System -> Configuration -> Clients -> MailChimp -> API Key

Magento MailChimp MageMonkey Plugin

Removing blocks from Magento

So you started a new Magento webshop and got overwhelmed by lots of features and widgets?

It could be that you would like to remove some widgets and plugins. In order to do that, navigate to: /app/design/frontend/default/default/layout and open local.xml (or create it).

On top, between the <default>…</default> tags place the removal codes:

Removing the shopping cart at the right side

<remove name=”right.cart_sidebar”/>

 

Removing the standard banners

<remove name=”right.permanent.callout”/>
<remove name=”left.permanent.callout”/>

Removing recently viewed products

<remove name=”left.reports.product.viewed”/>
<remove name=”right.reports.product.viewed”/>

Removing the top search

<remove name=”top.search” />

Removing the PayPal logo

<remove name=”paypal.partner.right.logo”/>

Remove the compare sidebar

<remove name=”catalog.compare.sidebar”/>

Remove compared products bar

<remove name=”right.reports.product.compared”/>

Remove reorder sidebar

<remove name=”sale.reorder.sidebar”></remove>

Improved Magento Checkout (Free one page step checkout)

One of the most important pages of your webshop is the checkout page. When people want to checkout, they expect a fast way of checkout. Unfortunately the current checkout of Magento is still a bit annoying, because of the illogical checkout process.

Free Better Checkout

So what should you do? Buy an expensive one step checkout for a starting webshop? No, that’s not necessary. There is a solution that only requires some CSS improvements and changes the process dramtically.

For example take a look on the improved checkout Dutch website Pyjamaonline:

Magneto Improved One Page Checkout

Looks better than the standard, doesn’t it? Want to make such improvements for your own webshop as well? Download it here: http://www.h-o.nl/blog/improved_magento_one_page_checkout_design_css_only/

Also want to know how to remove the unnecessary login step?

Changing the size of product pictures in Magento

Standard the size of Magento product icon pictures are 135 x 135 pixels. For most purposes that size is a bit to small. How to change the size of these picture?

Changing the size of product images on category list

To change the size of  the image open your website directory and navigate to: app/design/frontend/default/default/template/catalog/product and open list.phtml. Around line 98 you see the following code:

<img src=”<?php echo $this->helper(‘catalog/image’)->init($_product, ‘small_image’)->resize(135); ?>” width=”135″ height=”135″ alt=”<?php echo $this->stripTags($this->getImageLabel($_product, ‘small_image’), null, true) ?>” />

Change it to by example 200 x 200:

<img src=”<?php echo $this->helper(‘catalog/image’)->init($_product, ‘small_image’)->resize(200); ?>” width=”200″ height=”200″ alt=”<?php echo $this->stripTags($this->getImageLabel($_product, ‘small_image’), null, true) ?>” />

Upload the file to your webdir and refresh the cache. Now you see the images in the greater format.

Changing the size of product images on the product page

You can do the same for the images on the product page. Just go to /app/design/frontend/default/default/template/catalog/product/view and open media.phtml. Here you see the same tag with resizing to 265. Change this to your desired format and refresh the cache.